Part 16 (2/2)
Willa shook her head.
”Not lately. I happened to be among those present when El Negrito made his last sortie from the hills.”
”The deuce you were!” The small eyes filmed craftily. ”I beg your pardon, Miss Murdaugh, but you astonish me! I had no idea----! Most disastrous affair, that.”
”Very.” Willa dropped her eyes. ”That is the worst of the country down there, those bandit raids. Creatures like El Negrito know no law but their own; they can't be hired or bribed or coerced and no one knows when they will take it into their heads to appear, murdering and looting and burning. It's a picturesque country, but bad for the nerves.”
She turned as the man on her right spoke to her, and apparently was deaf to the sigh with which Harrington Chase drained his wine-gla.s.s.
She had piqued his curiosity, aroused his interest and disturbed by just a pin-p.r.i.c.k his pachydermatous equanimity; she would not raise again before the draw.
Later, Winnie found his way to her side in the music-room.
”Chase has been telling us over the liqueurs that you've had some exciting experiences down in Mexico. That's where you learned to play poker, isn't it? Jove, I envy you!”
”Poker isn't so difficult!” she laughed. ”If you'd stop betting your head off on two pairs, Mr. North, you wouldn't find it so expensive.”
”Oh, you know I don't mean that! I was thinking of your adventures.
Father told me he found you living with some old friends on a big fruit-growing estate near a small town, and I supposed it had been all rather lonely and humdrum, until that quiet little game a few weeks ago made me realize that you must have seen a bit of the strenuous side down there. That would be the life for me!”
She glanced at his round, innocuous face, with the downy mustache and ruminative eyes, and smiled irrepressibly. Then her own face grew grave.
”I wonder! You see, Mr. North, it isn't all like a movie; there's an element of uncertainty that keeps a man quick on the trigger. I was living with friends at the Casa de Limas, as your father told you. But if he had arrived on a certain night just a week or so before, he would have found me barricaded in a--a great hall in town, with men shot to pieces and dying like flies all around me, and three hundred butchering rebels from the hills battering in the door.”
”Great guns!” exclaimed Winnie. ”Fancy your living through that! What happened--did your friends manage to beat them off?”
”No, the government troops came; the Carranzistas. But they were only just in time.”
”Phew! No wonder you spoke of the movies! It sounds like a melodrama, doesn't it?”
”It was a tragedy.” Willa's voice was very low. ”We would all have been wiped out, if it had not been for one man. He was with us when the raiders came, but he fought his way through them, took one of their own horses and rode to the barracks for the troops; ten miles each way, and he made the whole trip in an hour, wounded as he was. He reached us just as the door went down, and I'll never forget him cutting his way through that crowd of fiends to fall unconscious at my feet.”
”I shouldn't think you could!” Winnie's breath came fast. ”What a magnificent stunt for a chap to do! Was he a Mexican?”
”No, an American. His name is Kearn Thode.”
”What! Who?” Winnie exploded. ”You can't mean----! For the love of Pete!”
Willa stared at him in dawning comprehension.
”You don't mean that you know him?”
”'Know him'?” he repeated, jubilantly. ”I should rather think I do!
Cla.s.smate of mine at college and the best fellow that ever lived. So old Kearn's been pulling off heroic stuff in Mexico! I never thought he had it in him; he was always one of the quiet kind, but at that he was right there when it came to a show-down. He's an engineer of some sort and forever wandering over the face of the earth. I haven't seen much of him consequently in the last three or four years, but I ran into him about six months ago, and he told me he'd been out in Oklahoma. I wonder what he's doing in Mexico!”
”Tell me about him,” Willa invited. ”I'm interested after what he did, although I really liked him before that; he is so strong and clean and straightforward.”
”Yes, he's all of that,” replied Winnie. ”There isn't very much to tell about him, though. We were at St. Paul's together and then college, and we were pretty thick in those days, although he never cared much for the society racket. His sister is his only living relative; that's she, Mrs. Beekman, in the gray gown over there.”
<script>